The interview saw him suggest the UK economy was entering a "menopausal" era after a peak in productivity from the digital revolution.

Mr Broadbent indicated that a "pause" between two technological leaps forward, akin to one experienced by late-Victorian industrialists from steam to electricity, could be behind the slump in productivity that has been blamed for stagnating wages.

It sparked a raft of angry tweets and comes as an embarrassment to the Bank, which has sought to promote gender diversity within its ranks.

The Bank has already come under fire after revealing a 25% pay gap, with its male employees paid almost a quarter more than their female colleagues.

There is only one woman on the Bank's nine-strong rate-setting committee - Silvana Tenreyro.

Jonathan Riley also took to Twitter to slam it as "truly disgraceful".

"Perhaps reference to flabby, flacid, balding men who have lost their potency might have been more appropriate?," he said.

Mr Broadbent sits on the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which recently stunned the City by holding interest rates amid grim forecasts for the economy.

A former economist at Goldman Sachs, Mr Broadbent is considered a potential successor to the Bank's governor Mark Carney, when his term ends in a year's time.

In his interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr Broadbent said the term menopausal means "you've passed your productive peak".

Britain's productivity woes pose a headache for the Government and economists, and consensus on the cause remains elusive.

Much as the Victorians had to deal with a lull between the ages of steam and electricity, the UK may be seeing a trough between the digital era and the next big technological advance, possibly from artificial intelligence.

Mr Broadbent sought to explain that the slowdown in productivity growth to a near-halt at the end of 1800s has been described as a "climacteric" period.

Economists and historians say one cause for the Victorian slowdown could have been "a pause between two general purpose technologies, steam on the one hand, electricity on the other," Mr Broadbent told the paper.

However he remained sceptical that the reason for Britain's "undesirable" low productivity levels at present will be decisively identified any time soon, given the continued debate around what caused the Victorian problem.

His comments come after official figures showed that productivity fell 0.5% in the first quarter.